"Why did Vulcans initiate contact with so immature a species as the human? Haven't you wondered, T'Shael? Our technology far surpassed theirs. Our arts, our philosophy, our commitment to peace—all that constitutes a culture—were superior. Why then our eagerness to comprehend these beings? Can you not use the example of your own experience as answer?
"Consider that you are free, T'Shael. You have fulfilled your pledge to the Commander with no harm to me. You are freed of mate, of kindred, of Warrantorship. The universe is vast and full of alternatives. You have nothing remaining to you but the human. How will you choose?"
He watched the struggle she could no longer suppress, watched with quiet recognition the familiar birth-pangs of emotion in one of his own. He who had been reborn in the rebirth of V'ger could officiate in this rite with no little appreciation.
"Listen to your soul, T'Shael-kam," he said tenderly. "It must be the final arbiter. You have passed through a portal through which there is no returning. Love for the human, once initiated, cannot be undone. Accept that you can never repay your t'hy'la for her sacrifice, and let this be the foundation of your love."
T'Shael found that her eyes had filled with tears. Overcome with shame she sought to hide them, blink them away, but the eyes of the deep one burned into her and she knew she could hide nothing from him. He had led her along a path where his own footsteps were plainly visible. She turned to him and he held out his hand to her in the ta'al. She responded, matching her hand to his. Spock brushed the tears from her eyelashes with gentle fingers.
"Go," he barely whispered. "Go and share your discovery with she who is your t'hy'la."
Cleante pressed the release on her cabin door almost before the buzzer sounded. She knew who would be there.
She saw the dampness on the plain, somber face, and before she could speak T'Shael took her in her arms—awkwardly, inexperienced, but willing to practice for the rest of her life.
"You do not carry Kalor's child," she whispered, sensing this and puzzled by it. "Why did you not tell me? Why keep this knowledge even from yourself?"
"To pique your curiosity. To try and hold you here," Cleante said through her own tears. "To find out if you still loved me."
They clung to each other like children.
Jasmine alFaisal began to materialize on the transporter pod while the Admiral was still shouldering into his uniform tunic. Spock, standing at parade rest beside the transporter con, buttoned down and impeccable as always, gave him a bemused look. Kirk secured the front flap of his tunic, cleared his throat, and braced himself as if for a hurricane.
But it was a very subdued High Commissioner, bereft of jewels and badges of office, her jet black hair pulled back severely from a face that wore no official mask, who followed the Admiral to the VIP lounge, stopping to thank as many individual crewmembers as she encountered for their part in the rescue, not in the well-practiced tones of diplomacy but in the simple, unrehearsed words of a mother who has had her child restored to her. Jim Kirk made note of the absence of glitter, of the real woman emerging from behind the facade for perhaps the first time in years. He left Jasmine alone in the lounge so that she and Cleante could have their reunion in private.
Cleante had insisted that T'Shael accompany her; T'Shael had as adamantly refused. It might have become a fullfledged quarrel if Cleante hadn't remembered McCoy's saying about winning an argument with a Vulcan.
"But you'll join me in a little while," she said, not asking. "I especially want her to meet you."
"Perhaps," T'Shael said softly.
How to explain that the levels of meaning of mother and daughter, dimensioned by human emotion and contrasted with her own Vulcan rootlessness, might be more than she could comfortably encompass? Yet she did arrive after a time, after the embraces and the tears and the catching-up-on-what-they'd-missed—not only for the six months of Cleante's captivity but for a lifetime of strained relations—were over, and mother and daughter sat contemplating the blue tranquility of the planetoid looming large below them. The quiet shush of the door to the VIP lounge seemed a fearful racket in contrast to the silence of the Vulcan who crossed its threshold.
Cleante came and took T'Shael's hand, bringing her into the room. Jasmine stood and almost locked into her diplomatic mode from sheer habit—Vulcans had always made her feel artificial, she supposed rightfully so. She had also, always, disliked Cleante's friends on principle. But Cleante's talk had been filled with this one, and the changes Jasmine could see in her butterfly of a daughter, now grown deep and thoughtful and mature, could only have had one catalyst. The High Commissioner put her arm around her daughter's waist and held out her other hand to the introverted one, drawing her into the circle as if she had suddenly acquired a second daughter.
"I won't be running for a second term," Jasmine told Cleante sometime later. "You'd be surprised at how fatiguing forty-odd years of smiling can be. I've a chance at ambassador-at-large next year, and if I don't get that—well. I'll sit home with my feet up and do a memoir, or lecture. This life has really become a bore lately."
"You're sure it has nothing to do with my going back to T'lingShar as a Warrantor?" Cleante asked suspiciously.
"Of course not!" her mother protested, fooling no one. "Besides, Mikhail has asked me to cut down on my planet-hopping just a little. He feels it detracts from our time together, and since he's been such a dear through all of this …"
"'Mikhail,'" Cleante repeated mischievously. "Let me see: he's two meters tall and blond and rippling with muscles and he has those wonderful Slavic cheekbones, and he's a lot younger than you but of course he has the most mature mind, and he's an attaché with the Martian contingent. Or is he the Pan Slavia ambassador's bodyguard? Am I close?"
Jasmine tried for a contrite look; it didn't work. Cleante burst into giggles.
"Mother, you're impossible!" she said. "And I love you for it."
She studied her mother's face closely for the first time and saw the months of strain and worry, the gray streaks in the jet black hair that had never been there before. Jasmine took her hand and squeezed it.
"It's going to be different for us from now on, Cle," she said with a catch in her voice. "Promise!"
"I know, Mother," Cleante said, then tried to lighten the mood. "Besides, if I could teach a Vulcan to love, you should be easy!"
"What did you do to her?" Jim Kirk wanted to know as he and Spock watched T'Shael and Cleante together, an attractive portrait of two young females born under different stars, joined by a bond that owned no alienness, no differences. "You must have presented her with quite a case for survival."
"I, Admiral?" Spock wore that characteristic deadpan which could disguise a great many things. "It was not the Vulcan influence but the human which drew T'Shael across the chasm to the side of life. My role was insignificant."
Kirk gave him a that's-not-good-enough-Spock look, and Spock tried a different approach.
"The Vulcan who relishes debate is still on the side of life," he suggested.
"Meaning you picked a fight with her. Dared her to keep on living."
"Crudely expressed, but essentially correct."
"A new Variant on a cha' match," Kirk suggested. "I would have loved to listen in on that one."
Spock gave him a bemused look.
"What kind of odds do you give them now, Spock? Now that the crises is over. Will they be able to make this—friendship bond—hold up under the day-to-day?"
"I am prepared to speculate that the divergence in their personalities might result in a certain degree of friction. Unavoidable where humans are concerned."
"Where humans are concerned with Vulcans, you mean. But on the whole you'd give them a fighting chance?"
"Jim, since the odds against you and me sustaining a friendship over this many years, and uncounted crises real and imagined, are approximately forty-seven-point-three-five to one—"
"I see your point," Kirk cut him off, preoccupied with watching the two
across the room, sharing their harmony vicariously. He was reminded of a very young, very grim Starfleet cadet and a very silent, very serious Vulcan junior officer who had met over a chessboard at the Academy several lifetimes before. "Have I ever told you you talk too much?"
Spock said nothing. He too had his memories.
"Mother and I are returning to Earth, at least for now," Cleante said. "We'll stop over at the starbase for a few days. There's a starliner taking the slow route back to the inplanets. Come with us?"
"Does this starliner also stop at Vulcan?" T'Shael wanted to know. Of all the decisions she had had to make in the past six months, why did this small, impermanent one cause her such difficulty?
"It does," Cleante said. "Is that what you want, to return to T'lingShar?"
T'Shael did not answer. She did not know what she wanted.
"I wouldn't stand in your way if you did. It might be good for you to touch base again, to return to the crafters' shop, to T'Sehn and Sethan. And of course your students at the settlement. Do you think that's what you'll do?"
"I do not know," T'Shael said softly.
What place was there for her on Vulcan now? The crafters' shop was her place to mourn the Gifted One, the place of the Masters for mourning Master Stimm. A return to her ancestral lands meant mourning the proud and unfortunate Stalek. The settlement was for mourning Resh and Krn and Jali, the Old City for mourning the savage past of her race. All of Vulcan was her mourning ground. No, not this, not now. Perhaps another, later time. Spock had said the universe was vast. What could Cleante offer as an alternative?
"Come with me to Earth," Cleante was saying. "Let me show you the blueness of our skies, the depths of our oceans, this thing we call snow. We'll eat falafel and climb the pyramids and sail the Nile in a reed boat. I'll introduce you to a dolphin and take you to the opera and—Oh, come with me, T'Shael, please?"
"If you wish it," T'Shael said.
"But do you wish it?" Cleante asked, not for the first time.
"Yes" was T'Shael's answer.
Look for STAR TREK fiction from Pocket Books
Star Trek®: The Original Series
Enterprise: The First Adventure • Vonda N. McIntyre
Final Frontier • Diane Carey
Strangers From the Sky • Margaret Wander Bonanno
Spock's World • Diane Duane
The Lost Years • J.M. Dillard
Probe • Margaret Wander Bonanno
Prime Directive • Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Best Destiny • Diane Carey
Shadows on the Sun • Michael Jan Friedman
Sarek • A.C. Crispin
Federation • Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Vulcan's Forge • Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz
Mission to Horatius • Mack Reynolds
Vulcan's Heart • Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz
Novelizations
Star Trek: The Motion Picture • Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan • Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock • Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home • Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier • J.M. Dillard
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country • J.M. Dillard
Star Trek Generations • J.M. Dillard
Starfleet Academy • Diane Carey
Star Trek books by William Shatner with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
The Ashes of Eden
The Return
Avenger
Star Trek: Odyssey (contains The Ashes of Eden, The Return, and Avenger)
Spectre
Dark Victory
Preserver
#1 • Star Trek: The Motion Picture • Gene Roddenberry
#2 • The Entropy Effect • Vonda N. McIntyre
#3 • The Klingon Gambit • Robert E. Vardeman
#4 • The Covenant of the Crown • Howard Weinstein
#5 • The Prometheus Design • Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath
#6 • The Abode of Life • Lee Correy
#7 • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan • Vonda N. McIntyre
#8 • Black Fire • Sonni Cooper
#9 • Triangle • Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath
#10 • Web of the Romulans • M.S. Murdock
#11 • Yesterday's Son • A.C. Crispin
#12 • Mutiny on the Enterprise • Robert E. Vardeman
#13 • The Wounded Sky • Diane Duane
#14 • The Trellisane Confrontation • David Dvorkin
#15 • Corona • Greg Bear
#16 • The Final Reflection • John M. Ford
#17 • Star Trek III: The Search For Spock • Vonda N. McIntyre
#18 • My Enemy, My Ally • Diane Duane
#19 • The Tears of the Singers • Melinda Snodgrass
#20 • The Vulcan Academy Murders • Jean Lorrah
#21 • Uhura's Song • Janet Kagan
#22 • Shadow Lord • Laurence Yep
#23 • Ishmael • Barbara Hambly
#24 • Killing Time • Della Van Hise
#25 • Dwellers in the Crucible • Margaret Wander Bonanno
#26 • Pawns and Symbols • Majliss Larson
#27 • Mindshadow • J.M. Dillard
#28 • Crisis on Centaurus • Brad Ferguson
#29 • Dreadnought! • Diane Carey
#30 • Demons • J.M. Dillard
#31 • Battlestations! • Diane Carey
#32 • Chain of Attack • Gene DeWeese
#33 • Deep Domain • Howard Weinstein
#34 • Dreams of the Raven • Carmen Carter
#35 • The Romulan Way • Diane Duane & Peter Morwood
#36 • How Much For Just the Planet? • John M. Ford
#37 • Bloodthirst • J.M. Dillard
#38 • The IDIC Epidemic • Jean Lorrah
#39 • Time For Yesterday • A.C. Crispin
#40 • Timetrap • David Dvorkin
#41 • The Three-Minute Universe • Barbara Paul
#42 • Memory Prime • Gar and Judith Reeves-Stevens
#43 • The Final Nexus • Gene DeWeese
#44 • Vulcan's Glory • D.C. Fontana
#45 • Double, Double • Michael Jan Friedman
#46 • The Cry of the Onlies • Judy Klass
#47 • The Kobayashi Maru • Julia Ecklar
#48 • Rules of Engagement • Peter Morwood
#49 • The Pandora Principle • Carolyn Clowes
#50 • Doctor's Orders • Diane Duane
#51 • Enemy Unseen • V.E. Mitchell
#52 • Home is the Hunter • Dana Kramer Rolls
#53 • Ghost-Walker • Barbara Hambly
#54 • A Flag Full of Stars • Brad Ferguson
#55 • Renegade • Gene DeWeese
#56 • Legacy • Michael Jan Friedman
#57 • The Rift • Peter David
#58 • Faces of Fire • Michael Jan Friedman
#59 • The Disinherited • Peter David
#60 • Ice Trap • L.A. Graf
#61 • Sanctuary • John Vornholt
#62 • Death Count • L.A. Graf
#63 • Shell Game • Melissa Crandall
#64 • The Starship Trap • Mel Gilden
#65 • Windows on a Lost World • V.E. Mitchell
#66 • From the Depths • Victor Milan
#67 • The Great Starship Race • Diane Carey
#68 • Firestorm • L.A. Graf
#69 • The Patrian Transgression • Simon Hawke
#70 • Traitor Winds • L.A. Graf
#71 • Crossroad • Barbara Hambly
#72 • The Better Man • Howard Weinstein
#73 • Recovery • J.M. Dillard
#74 • The Fearful Summons • Denny Martin Flynn
#75 • First Frontier • Diane Carey & Dr. James I. Kirkland
#76 • The Captain's Daug
hter • Peter David
#77 • Twilight's End • Jerry Oltion
#78 • The Rings of Tautee • Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
#79 • Invasion! #1: First Strike • Diane Carey
#80 • The Joy Machine • James Gunn
#81 • Mudd in Your Eye • Jerry Oltion
#82 • Mind Meld • John Vornholt
#83 • Heart of the Sun • Pamela Sargent & George Zebrowski
#84 • Assignment: Eternity • Greg Cox
#85-87 • My Brother's Keeper • Michael Jan Friedman
#85 • Republic
#86 • Constitution
#87 • Enterprise
#88 • Across the Universe • Pamela Sargent & George Zebrowski
#89-94 • New Earth
#89 • Wagon Train to the Stars • Diane Carey
#90 • Belle Terre • Dean Wesley Smith with Diane Carey
#91 • Rough Trails • L.A. Graf
#92 • The Flaming Arrow • Kathy and Jerry Oltion
#93 • Thin Air • Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Dean Wesley Smith
#94 • Challenger • Diane Carey
Star Trek: The Next Generation®
Metamorphosis • Jean Lorrah
Vendetta • Peter David
Reunion • Michael Jan Friedman
Imzadi • Peter David
The Devil's Heart • Carmen Carter
Dark Mirror • Diane Duane
Q-Squared • Peter David
Crossover • Michael Jan Friedman
Kahless • Michael Jan Friedman
Ship of the Line • Diane Carey
The Best and the Brightest • Susan Wright
Planet X • Michael Jan Friedman
Imzadi II: Triangle • Peter David
I, Q • John de Lancie & Peter David
The Valiant • Michael Jan Friedman
Novelizations
Encounter at Farpoint• David Gerrold
Unification • Jeri Taylor
Relics • Michael Jan Friedman
Descent • Diane Carey
All Good Things... • Michael Jan Friedman
Star Trek: Klingon • Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Star Trek Generations • J.M. Dillard
Star Trek: First Contact • J.M. Dillard
Dwellers in the Crucible Page 33